The army in dev't practice: the NAADS operation case

By Dr Najjuka Solome RSCJ

With the easy wisdom of hindsight, I deign to say that it is a rightful move to involve the army in the various rescue and development activities in the country.

This builds on a long tradition that stretches back to the ancient Greeks, only separated by a couple of millennia. For it is indelibly recorded that the profession of management began and developed as a profession of arms.

The history of the world is a history of warfare, and thus, it is also the history of public administration – for war is impossible without upbeat public administration behind it. This is the reason why one would intimately marry meticulous management to the army.

 Boric (2013) succinctly states that military officers were the first public administrators and this is evinced in the military nomenclature that pervades management as a discipline (strategy, the ancient art of generalship, is the employment of – the management of – overall resources, classically soldiers, to gain an objective). It is in good records that that the early martial skills constitute the most basic elements of all administrative processes.

It is therefore for this reason that I would calm my jitters fathoming this renascent NAADS operation under the aegis and in the cockles of the army.

We learn that hierarchy, line and staff personnel, logistics, and communications were all highly developed by ancient armies (Boric 2013).  Is it not time to build our utmost faith in this new process under the wing of Brig. Kayanja?

All said and done, there would be a couple of points to task over, if this new NAADS ministration be galvanised for execution. Firstly, In Uganda we have so much limited and carved out our soldiers in relation to war and the frontline (and while there, our societies have expected them to die in big numbers!). 

The moot point I underline here concerns how much conscientisation has gone on to prepare the civilians to ably cooperate and accept the army down in their gardens.  There ought to be multi-sessions of discussions to imbue the goodwill and imprint the capabilities of the army in the already skeptical civil populace psyches.

 Another point is hooked on the nose of the national dragon, corruption.

The death knell of NAADS can be heard in the germs of corruption that honeycombs all ranks of our society today. The army has not been at any point exonerated in this regard. Much apprehension around the success of the looming NAADS operation festers from the question as to whether this army will be well-remunerated and supervised to steer away from the corruption hydra.

It is well observed by the ancients, that brave soldiers have been ultimately wasted if not backed by leaders who can feed them and pay them. 

Marcus Tullius Cicero posits that “the sinews of war are infinite money.” Will the government strip itself of the required funding to appropriately facilitate the army workers in view of scaring away the hauling foxes of corruption that already loiter the NAADS pathways, even as we trust the level of integrity of these self-given Ugandans?

If then, we have the money to stave off corruption and to pay our gallant soldiers, shall we then consider the unemployed youth who would gain from a bit of training as para –surveillances, paramedics and such-like to supply for the emergencies and operations covered by the army at this point in time, if only for a couple of bucks? 

Questions of sustenance of this whole operation abound, but space here will not abide!

The writer is with Institute of Ethics and Development Studies at the Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi